


Show Me Your Fire

by SamIsNotLegend



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Asexual Character, BAMF!everyone, Canon Typical Violence, Crossover, Cussing, Eren is Harry, Gen, Harry is Eren, Independent!Harry, Smart!Harry, Sorry Not Sorry, hopefully, less confusing than it sounds, mentions of abuse, not really a reincarnation!fic, smart!Eren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5579379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamIsNotLegend/pseuds/SamIsNotLegend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I possessed one mind, one soul, and one spirit. But two bodies, with the weight of two worlds resting on my shoulders. And I say Bring. It. On! You bastards, I'll never go down without a fight!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Show Me Your Fire

I have never been just one person.  
I mean, yes, I am one person. I have one mind, one soul, one consciousness. But I possess two bodies. And I live in two different worlds. At the same time.  
Does that make sense?  
I’ll explain it further. I’m never asleep. Ever. My bodies sleep, but I don’t. While one is sleeping I’m in the other. Occupying it, I suppose. Writing it down like that sounds weird and confusing, but it makes perfect sense to me. Sometimes I bear one name, and sometimes I bear another, but I’m always me.  
My story begins as all do; with my birth.  
I was born to Carla and Grisha Jaeger on March 30th in the Shiganshina district hospital. My father, Grisha, helped deliver me and I was named Eren noon that day. The place where I was born and raised, Shiganshina, is the southernmost city of wall Maria. In the world I live in as Eren, humanity is protected by three circular walls. The walls protect us from Titans; humanoid giants that range from three to fifteen meters in height, and whose diet consists entirely of humans. But I was born in a time of peace, the Titans hadn’t breached the walls in over a hundred years, and people were content to spend their lives tucked safely away.  
Four months after my début into the world as Eren, I was born again. In a different world, and under a different name.  
Yep, I was born twice.  
I don’t remember anything, but if I did I’m sure I would remember being confused. Hey! I can imagine myself thinking, I already did this, why am I doing it again?!  
Regardless of the reason, I was born to Lily and James Potter, and thus named Harry James Potter.  
I remember October 31st vaguely. At that point I’d been Harry Potter for exactly fifteen months, and Eren Yaeger for nineteen. Collectively that meant I’d been alive for almost three years. We didn’t really do anything special that night. Perhaps if the circumstances were different we would have gone to visit some of my parent’s friends or something, but as it was we stayed home (we were always at home) and James and Lily tried to teach me to walk. I’d already learned to do so as Eren, but had yet to do so as Harry. I remember being frustrated; I didn’t yet understand that as Harry my body was younger and therefore less developed. Honestly I wasn’t even differentiating between my two bodies at that point, so I couldn’t understand why I could walk sometimes and sometimes I couldn’t. I didn’t learn to walk that night, but I wish I would have. Maybe it’s silly, but I think I would have liked Lily and James to see me walk before they died.  
They were murdered. That night Voldemort came for us. There was shouting, and the sound of things breaking. Lily ran into my room, her wand was broken, and she did her best to protect me, she really did. I know I was crying, probably really loudly, and Lily was doing her best to shush me and escape, but suddenly he was there.  
And he killed her.  
But he didn’t kill me.  
I awoke in my crib in Shiganshina and cried until Carla came to get me. I held onto her and refused to let go. She thought I’d had a nightmare and I told her no, it was real. She didn’t understand, but neither did I, not really.  
I followed Carla around all day after Lily and James died, and that night I refused to go to bed. At that point I didn’t know much, but I did know that once ‘asleep’ I would be with Lily and James again. Except something terrible had happened, and they were… gone. I didn’t know what ‘death’ was, but I knew that Lily’s glassy stare meant nothing good.  
Eventually Carla managed to get me to sleep, and the moment I closed my eyes I was immediately ‘awoken’ by a woman’s scream. Not Lily’s though. I opened my eyes and began crying as a woman in a flower-print dress with a long face stared at me in horror.  
And thus I was accepted into the Dursley household.  
xXxXxXx  
“I wish…” I was four and sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. Grisha sorted through paperwork across from me, and Carla chopped meat at the counter. Outside the sun had long since crept behind the walls, but the sky was only just then set ablaze by the true sunset. The entire house was bathed in a sense of peace and quiet. I broke it with my soft remark, catching even myself off guard. I hadn’t meant to speak aloud.  
“What is it, son?” Grisha put down his pen and turned to regard me seriously. I was smarter and more mature than most children my age, but Grisha had never treated me like a child.  
“Why am I here?” I asked, suddenly, blinking at him in open confusion.  
Silence met my question, and I felt the need to clarify. “Why am I here, behind the walls? Why right now? Why am I always…?” I drifted off into silence, the glow of the town fading.  
“Son? What do you mean? Where else would you be?”  
turned to look at them. Carla’s brows were scrunched in confusion and the easy grip in which she held the knife was betrayed by the blood coating it. Grisha stared at me with an intensity I would not have recognized if it wasn’t the same look my aunt gave me back in Privet drive. I stared back, eyes blown wide, and I realized, they didn’t know. They had no idea what I was talking about. They didn’t know about my life without them – about my life outside the walls. The implications of this revelation hit me faster than my four (almost eight) year old mind could process and I blinked quickly and looked down, returning to my previous task with a renewed vigor. “It’s nothing.” I muttered, “I mean nowhere. I was just thinking aloud.”  
The silence returned, and within a few minutes my parents had written off my strange ramble as a sleepy daydream.  
xXxXxXx  
“Oi freak!”  
The call made me look up from where I was weeding the front garden and turn to my cousin, who looked about as intimidating as a six year old could. Which was kind of intimidating, coming from a six year old.  
“What do you want, ya fat tub of lard?” I snapped, standing and wiping my hands on my pants.  
“I want you to go away.” He snarled, apparently not noticing my insult. “We want to play in the yard, but we can’t if your freakishness is stinking the place up.” For the first time I noticed that two of the other neighborhood kids were standing behind him.“Uh, Dudley” one of the other kids spoke, “what does it matter if he’s here? We can still pla – ”  
“No we can’t!” Dudley interrupted. “Don’t you see his eyes? He’s a freak, my mum says so. Sometimes he even says funny words that don’t make sense. He’s not normal!” The other child fell silent and stared at me uncertainly.  
My hands clenched into fists at my sides and I glared hard. “I have to finish weeding the garden. Go play somewhere else if I bother you that much.”  
“I said GO AWAY you FREAK!” Dudley was doing a good impression of his father, his face morphing through an impressive array of reds. (Not purple though, he wasn’t that good.)  
“Dumkopf.” I growled, “Call me freak one more time!” And there must have been enough of a warning in my stance and glare because he hesitated for a moment. The word ‘freak’ hadn’t used to bother me, but ever since I asked my kindergarten teacher the meaning it really irritated me. Mostly because I fit the description. I was a freak. I’d known since I was four and a half that it wasn’t normal to live two lives the way I do.  
“FREAK!”  
Well. It looks like idiocy trumps self-preservation instincts.I snarled, and launched myself at him, my thin arms wrapping around his bulbous stomach and knocking us both to the ground. The sound he made reminded me of the pigs back in in wall Maria, but his terror only lasted a moment before he began fighting back. We rolled around on the front lawn, trying to gain the upper hand. Despite the success of my surprise attack, he was a lot bigger and heavier than I was, and it wasn’t long before he had me pinned. He may have had the size, but fortunately I had the speed, and was a hell of a lot smarter than him. As he drew back a fist to nail me in the face, I launched my body upwards and caught him in the mouth with my forehead.  
He started bawling immediately, rolling off me and holding his mouth. I stood up a little unsteadily and wiped blood away from my forehead. His teeth had broken my skin. Totally worth it.  
“Muuuuuum!” Dudley wailed, and ran toward the house, big, fat tears rolling down his face. The two kids who’d been following him ran off, and I followed my cousin inside. If I caught him early enough, maybe I could threaten him into keeping his mouth shut. “Muuum, the freak h-hit me!”  
“Stop calling me freak!” I roared, “my name is Harry!” I skidded into the kitchen just in time to see my aunt take Dudley’s pudgy face in her hands.  
“Dudley! Oh, my poor ickle Duddykins! Are you okay, baby?!”  
I was universally grateful Carla and Grisha had never seen fit to give me a nickname.  
“He… he hit me!” Dudley wailed, and before I could make an escape my aunt had me by the collar of my shirt.  
“You brat!” She shrieked, shaking me, “what were you thinking?!”  
I batted at her claw-like hands and leaned away as far as I could. From across the room I made eye-contact with Dudley who was grinning through the tear tracks down his face. I made a cutting motion across my throat.  
“Mum! The freak threatened me!”  
She threw me to the floor and wailed, “How dare you threaten my baby! Get upstairs and clean that blood off your face RIGHT NOW!” Taking a moment to visibly calm herself, she hissed, “after that finish weeding the garden and -! And then get in your cupboard and stay there. No dinner!”  
I glared at her from my position propped up by my elbows but didn’t argue. I was stuck in a precarious position in the Dursley household, and constantly testing my boundaries. To give in would be to admit defeat, but to full on fight would be begging for a beating.  
So I was stuck in a twisted tug-o-war, pulling for more freedom and asserting my defiance then giving some slack when I’d gone too far. I trudged upstairs to the bathroom and then started washing away the blood from my forehead. It was bleeding pretty heavily, as head wounds often do. I’d seen Grisha take care of a few before, and the cut wasn’t deep, so I didn’t worry. Dudley’s teeth had gotten almost smack dab into the center of my scar though. I smiled a bit grimly as I covered it, scar and all, with a bandage. Now if only I could’ve covered up my eyes and hair too, my aunt would finally be pleased with my appearance.  
I couldn’t be certain, as my relatives didn’t have any photos and I couldn’t remember what Lily and James looked like, but I thought that my appearance might have been a mix of all four of my parents. I had Carla’s skin, I was pretty certain of that. She and I both tanned really easily, and kept out tans longer than most. I had her hair color too, a sort neutral brown which I thought looked better on her pretty long hair than my perpetually messy hair. I didn’t know where that came from, but I liked to think it was a trait passed down from James rather than just a result of me sleeping in a cupboard fifty percent of the time. My eyes were two-toned though, which I thought was kind of cool. Both of my eyes were green, but my left was more of a dark emerald-y color and my right bordered on turquoise. I’d gotten the turquoise eye from Grisha, which left the emerald one from maybe Lily. Grisha said I had heterochromia. Carla just thought it was pretty.  
My aunt hated them though. Fortunately for her the two-tones were only really obvious if you looked me in the eyes for more than half a second. So I was forbidden from making eye contact with strangers, and that was that. She’d tried getting me color contacts once, but I’d put my foot down on that and she’d finally given up. But only after realizing it’s impossible to force a child to put in contacts if they really don’t want to.  
Stalling losing its amusement, I bounded down the stairs with a pink band aid stretched across my forehead.  
I was locked into the cupboard for three days. After the first day I got the brilliant idea to ask Grisha to teach me to pick locks. He wanted to know why and I told him, “Just in case mean people ever try to lock me up”. He got a considering look on his face and then agreed, but only taught me after a really long lecture about morals.  
He taught me using a hairclip he’d borrowed from my mother and a small bit of stiff wire. I practiced until I could open up all the locks in the house in under three minutes. Except for the door to the basement, that one used a special kind of old-fashioned key that was nearly impossible to pick, no matter how hard I tried. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to break out of the cupboard during that prison sentence, because there was never an opportunity to steal one of my aunt’s bobby pins during my bathroom breaks.  
Being stuck in a broom cupboard is boring as hell. I spent most of my time sleeping, and therefore in Shiganshina. But when I couldn’t sleep, I took pride in being as annoying as possible.  
“Let me out!” I pounded on the door when it was only my aunt and I home. “I’m innocent I tell you! Innocent! It was the jealous lover! Check her alibi again, it’s got more holes than a strippers stockings! I was fraaaaaaamed!” I’d overheard that a few weeks ago while this crazy guy was being arrested by the Garrison. He’d said some other things too, but I didn’t know how to translate them into English. Still, I was saving them for a good opportunity.  
I heard my aunt gasp and drop something in the kitchen, but she didn’t come to yell at me so I chalked it up to a failure.  
“No~body kno~ws the trouble I’ve seen~” My aunt turned on the television, and I kept singing at just the right volume so that every time there was a pause in the commentary she would be able to make out my voice.  
“Santa baby, leave a present under the tree~. For me …‘cause I really want a pre~sent.”  
…I didn’t know the lyrics to many songs.  
It was during my fourth rendition of ‘It’s a Small World’, that my aunt came to pound on the cupboard door and tell me to shut up. I went ahead and did so. If I annoyed her too much, she’d get my uncle involved.  
xXxXxXx  
Three weeks later I was laying by the bank of the river that ran through Shiganshina and kicking my feet back and forth as I stared at my reflection. The walls loomed in front of me, but I did my best to ignore them and enjoy the half-hour or so of direct sunlight we had left. I’d been locked up again at the Dursley’s, this time for fighting at school, and my punishment was cupboard-arrest except for chores and school. I hadn’t even started the fight this time! Dudley and his stupid-posse had gotten to me on the playground, and what was I supposed to do? I guess I could have run, but, well… I never run. Although it was funny when the teacher’s hair had suddenly turned blue when she was yelling at me. I still didn’t know how that happened. What wasn’t funny was the way she blamed it on me, despite a complete lack of evidence, or even any logical backing. I grumbled and threw a pebble into the water. I hated that. This. Everything. I hated this. Flopping onto my back I looked up at the sky, blue with fluffy white clouds, and the majority of it blocked by giant gray walls surrounding everyone on all sides. Looming higher… and higher… and closer… My mind screamed trapped! over and over, like a broken record.  
I clenched my little baby teeth and gave up on pretending to ignore the walls. No matter where I was, I never stopped being a prisoner. In Shiganshina my prison walls were big and obvious, but dampened by kind parents, a warm bed, and plenty of food. In Privet drive the walls were disguised closet spaces and hunger for days on end. For me, the world began and ended in Shiganshina’s little bubble, and Privet drive existed only so far as to the next road of perfect, quaint little houses.  
I glared up at the hulking wall in front of me as it stole the last little bit of sun and thought to myself that I hated being a prisoner more than anything. “You can’t keep me locked up forever!” I yelled, launching myself off the grass to throw a pebble at the wall. It fell way short, not even coming close, but I watched as it arced down anyway and then huffed when it inevitably hit the ground.  
“Who can’t keep you locked up forever?”  
I jumped in shock and spun around to find myself staring at a pair of blue eyes that at first seemed very close, but were actually several feet away.  
“Oh, do you mean the walls?” the blue eyes, er, the boy, looked away from me to squint up at the walls. “They do kind of seem kind of like a cage, huh?”  
I didn’t reply for a moment, and the boy, who was about my age by the way, started to shift away in embarrassment.  
“Yeah!” I agreed suddenly, and maybe a bit too loudly. I’d never met someone who’d even come close to describing the walls as a cage before. Let alone someone my age. “I’m Eren Yeager! What’s your name? Let’s be friends.”  
“Oh!” The boy’s eyes widened and he clutched the book he was holding tighter to his chest. “Oh – okay. My name is Armin.”  
“Nice to meetcha Armin.” I fell silent, hands falling to my sides as I looked at him. It occurred to me that this was the first person to ever agree to be my friend. In Privet drive Dudley had always scared away other kids I played with, and although I’d played with other kids here, I clashed with most of them.  
“I’ve… uh. I’ve never had a friend before.” Armin admitted quietly, peeking up at me through his blond bangs.  
“Me neither.” I said, and threw another pebble at the wall. “Do you know what friends are supposed to do?”  
Armin visibly relaxed under my own admission of friendlessness. He opted to take a few steps closer and pick up a pebble. “Not really.” He admitted, and tossed the rock gently into the river. I glanced up at the sky for a moment.  
Though the sun had dropped behind the walls, we still had another few hours of daylight.  
“I like bugs.” I said, “wanna catch some?”  
His eyes lit up and he grinned, flashing a full set of teeth. (I self-consciously ran my tongue over gaps in my mouth my baby teeth had left behind.)  
“Sure! Do you think we could find a butterfly? My mom told me that butterfly wings are perfectly symmetrical in wing patterns, but I want to see for myself. Did you know that they actually have four wings?”  
“What? No way, butterflies have two wings!”  
“No, really, the wings just overlap so you can’t tell! C’mon, let’s find one and I’ll show you!”  
“Alright… hey, what does ‘symmetrical’ mean?”  
xXxXxXx  
“Mom! Guess what?!” It was a little past dark when I ran home that day, and Carla was waiting by the door for me. “Wh – Eren how did you get so dirty?” She swiped a thumb over my dirt clogged cheek and I tolerated it until she licked her thumb and tried to get the dirt off that way. “Ew, mom! That’s gross!”  
“Come inside, you need a bath.”  
“Yeah, but mom!” I whined, not resisting against her pull. “You didn’t say ‘what’ yet! I said ‘guess what’, and you’re supposed to say ‘what’!”  
“Alright,” she laughed, “What?”  
“I made a friend today!” I burst, hardly able to contain my excitement.  
“Congratulations, honey!” Carla gushed, sharing my enthusiasm. “What’s their name?”  
“His name is Armin, and he’s super smart! We went looking for bugs, and he’s a like butterfly expert, I think. Did you know that butterflies have four wings? And that caterpillars are actually baby butterflies? I didn’t know that. Apparently caterpillars go through this thing called a meta-more-pho-sis, and then turn into butterflies! Like magic! ‘Cept Armin said it’s actually called bi-ol-o-gy, and magic is an unfounded science.”  
Carla giggled and tested the faucet temperature as she filled up the tub. Apparently satisfied, she turned to be and pulled my shirt over my head.  
“I can undress myself mom!” I cried, and then proceeded to do just that, hopping into the bath before she could protest. “It’s too cold!”  
“He said magic is an unfounded science?” She asked, turning up the temperature.  
“Yeah. I think ‘unfounded’ means ‘not proven’ or something. I forgot to ask.”  
“Finally you’ve made a friend as smart as you!” Carla crooned and squirted some soap into her hands and then began to lather it into my hair. I wondered briefly if it’d been worrying for her, the fact that I didn’t have any friends. I hoped not.  
“No, sorry mom, he’s way smarter than me.”  
“Oh? Is he smarter than me?”  
“Uh…”  
“How about your dad, is he smarter than your dad?”  
“Well… dad is a doctor so... maybe if Armin was older…”  
“Oh-ho. So are you going to play with him tomorrow?”  
“Yeah! Well, maybe. Armin’s grandma is sick so he said he has to help take care of her sometimes.”  
Carla nodded. “Your dad said that there is a bit of a flu going around. C’mon, you’re all clean, let’s get you dried off.”  
I grew more solemn as bedtime approached, as I always did. Carla tried to cheer me up, also as she always did. “The sooner you get to sleep the sooner you can play with your new friend, sweetie.” I wanted to tell her that things didn’t work that way, at least not for me, but I didn’t. Instead I just nodded, brushed my teeth, and crawled under the covers of my small but comfortable bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Not really sure if I should to continue this, but it’s been floating around for a while, so I thought I may as well post it. Does Eren’s position make sense? Did I explain it well enough? Is anyone interested in seeing more?  
> About his mental/accumulative age: As Eren, double it and subtract four months. As Harry do the same but add four months.  
> Now this is totally relative and doesn’t take into account a whole bunch of factors. Including the rather long time he spent as an infant, his general confusion revolving his situation for the first few years of his life, the experience someone his mental age would possess but he does not, the fact that he hangs out with people his physical age, and some other things like hormones and stress and stuff. So basically this means that though he’ll have twenty eight years of experience by the time he’s fourteen, he’ll probably be more like twenty or so in mental disposition only.


End file.
